Moral Music Management: Ethical Decision-Making After Avicii

The relationship between a musician and their manager is one of the most central and crucial aspects in their careers. Music managers

We use the terminology ‘music manager’ in this article drawing on the phrasing employed by the Music Manager’s Forum (MMF) and the European Music Managers Alliance (EMMA). As UK Music (2019) state, “Music Managers exist to represent Music Makers – e.g. Artists, Bands, Producers, Songwriters and nurture their business and creative interests. Managers can be considered the Chief Operating Officer of the Artists global business”. This is analogous to other definitions such as ‘artist manager’ (Morrow, 2006, 2013, 2018) but is distinct from broader definitions of music management, which might include the management of ‘music’ on behalf of a label or publisher, and so on.

At the same time, the role of the music manager is one that has been widely stereotyped and negatively depicted in the media (Anderton et al., 2013). Dannen (1991) almost 30 years ago described the music business as an industry (in)famous for unethical and abusive practices. Indeed, the exploitative aspects of some managerial contracts are still widely recollected in the profession (Williamson, 2016), although some have tried to challenge this image (Rogan, 1988; Morrow, 2006). Following the tragic death of Avicii (real name Tim Bergling) in 2018, many in the popular media, and indeed reportedly Avicii’s own family, were seen to ask questions vis-à-vis the role and responsibilities of music managers to protect the mental and physical health of musicians (Williams, 2018; Ralston, 2018)

This idea of what kind of ‘duty of care’ music managers have (or should have) has echoed debates from years earlier around the duty of care record companies have (or should have) following the death of Amy Winehouse (Lindvall, 2011).

There is a small body of academic literature interrogating the regulation of music management from a legal perspective (Hertz, 1988; Gilenson, 1990; O’Brien, 1992), but rather less considering this from an ethical or moral perspective. The work of Morrow (2013, 2018) has been a notable exception in this field, exploring what he has described, drawing on the work of Gino and Ariely (2012), as ‘moral flexibility’ (ibid, 2018: 95), which he suggests is part of music management. By this, he refers to the ability to justify potentially illegal, or at least unethical decisions, within a working environment which is largely free of formal regulation, and within which personal traits such as creative decision-making and openness can be seen to correlate with dishonesty. As Gino and Ariely (2012: 455) note, “We are often surprised to learn that successful and ingenious decision makers in these [other] contexts have crossed ethical boundaries”. Reconceptualising this, Morrow (2018: 95) suggests that “divergent thinking and openness positively correlate with moral flexibility, and therefore creativity promotes dishonesty by increasing one’s ability to self-justify bad deeds”.

Music managers of course do not always behave dishonestly. Many are highly professional, dedicated to their artists, passionate about their work and heavily invested both emotionally and financially in their artists’ careers. There are many books written about ‘how to be’ a music manager (Allen, 2018; Weiss and Gaffney, 2012); however, there are a few academic studies that have sought to interrogate how and why music managers make the decisions that they do taking moral or ethical decision-making as their central focus (see the work of Hughes et.al (2014) on ‘duty of care’ for one of the few examples). In the wake of the death of Avicii, and in the context of the debates engendered by the literature outlined above on the nature of the musician–manager relationship, this article will seek to ask what constitutes ethical decision-making for music managers and what ethical guidelines or structures do they use when making their decisions? For instance, how do music managers weigh economic concerns of profitability (which for Fassin (2005) can drive non-ethical behaviour), against concerns for emotional and physical well-being? This was a tension viscerally illustrated following the death of Avicii, for example, when it was seen that his manager had facilitated bookings of more than 200 shows per year, playing several times a week, sometimes in two different cities on the same night (Ralston, 2018). With Bergling’s annual earnings exceeding $20 million (£15 m), what constituted a moral or ethical choice here, and indeed ethical for whom? By engaging with these questions, it is hoped that this study can contribute towards the literature examining the musician–manager relationship as well as encourage debate within the professional music industries about best practices for managers, notably in the aforementioned context of what has been described as ‘the mental health crisis’ (Dhillon, 2018) in the music industry among musicians.

The literature on corporate ethics from organisational and management studies has produced some of the most valuable models of ethical decision-making. This literature has also been helpful in providing key definitions, which will be adopted in this article. First, this article will adopt the definition of a ‘moral issue’ by Velasquez and Rostankowski (1985) cited in Jones (1991: 367): “[A] moral issue is present where a person’s actions, when freely performed, may harm or benefit others”. Second, we will adopt the definition of ‘moral agent’ used by Jones (ibid) as: “[A] moral agent is a person who makes a moral decision, even though he or she may not recognise that moral issues are at stake”. Finally, we will adopt the definition of an ‘ethical decision’, also by Jones (ibid) as being: “[A] decision that is both legal and morally acceptable to the larger community”. The question is; when faced with a moral issue, how does a moral agent make an ethical decision?

In seeking to ascertain this, Rest (1986) proposed a four-stage model whereby agents must do the following: first, they recognise the existence of a moral issue that requires their deliberation; second, the reaching of a moral judgement following that period of deliberation; third, deciding upon the most appropriate course of action (what is called ‘moral intent’) and finally, implementing the decided upon moral behaviour. In response to this, and building on a range of ethical decision-making models from the field of marketing (including Ferrell and Gresham, 1985; Hunt and Vittell, 1986; Trevino, 1986 and Dubinsky and Loken, 1989), work on ‘Moral Intensity’ by Jones (1991) suggested that the first stage of Rest’s model—the recognition of the moral issue—was central. People must first recognise a moral issue before anything else takes place. Drawing on arguments from moral philosophy regarding moral responsibility based on proportionality (Wirtenberger, 1962), Jones’ model focussed on how moral agents make sense of moral issues, as opposed to earlier models which focussed only on the agents themselves, to suggest that “every ethical issue can be represented in terms of its moral intensity” (Jones, 1991: 374), which is comprised of six components. Moral agent’s awareness of these components of moral intensity would, therefore, inform their decision-making. These factors (taken from Jones, 1991: 374–377) are:

Magnitude of consequences: The sum of the harms (or benefit) done to victims (or beneficiaries) of the moral act in question.

The intention of this model was to identify components of ethical decision-making and behaviour, and that further empirical research was required to specify the relationship between the moral intensity constructs and adopted behaviours. Consequently, over the following decades, researchers have employed this model as the basis of ethical decision-making (Robin, Reidenbach and Forrest, 1996; Singhapakdi, Vitell and Kraft, 1996; Chia and Mee, 2000; Karacaer, et al., 2009). However, despite the increase in interest in corporate ethics and the application of ethical decision-making models in many industries, with reference to the music industries, ethical matters have tended to focus on issues of legal representation (Krasilovsky and Meloni, 1990), conflicts of interest vis-à-vis contractual relationships (Gilenson, 1990) or the ethics of music piracy (Shang, Chen and Chen, 2008; Coyle et al., 2009). No empirical investigation has been conducted concerning ethical decision-making processes employed by music managers in their daily professional lives, and certainly not one employing the moral intensity framework. In the wake of the death of Avicii, it is crucial that this question is confronted. Therefore, this article will employ Jones’ (1991) methodological approach to engage with the following research question: How do music managers identify ethical issues and make moral choices?

Data were collected through a scenario-based questionnaire—an approach commonly used as a research instrument in business ethics studies focussed on examining ethical judgements and intentions (Singhapakdi and Vitell, 1990; Banerjee, Cronan and Jones, 1998). According to Alexander and Becker (1978), the use of scenarios helps to standardise social stimulation across participants, making the decision-making situation more ‘real’. Three scenarios were developed, and an action was proposed. Scenario C was included as a ‘neutral’ premise to determine whether participants would differentiate moral intensity across the scenarios.

These scenarios and actions were presented to six music managers based in London (UK) drawn from our professional network and through introductions generously made by a former senior figure of a music managers’ organisation. After considering the scenarios, participants completed a questionnaire of eight statements with Likert-type scales for responses adapted from prior research by Singhapakdi, Vitell and Kraft (1996). Statements 1 and 2 were devised to measure ethical perception and ethical intention, respectively, while statements 3–8 were devised to measure dimensions of moral intensity (Jones, 1991) where a single statement was adapted to measure each component as per earlier research by Singer (1996). These statements were:

‘The situation above involves an ethical problem’. High scores would indicate relatively high levels of moral recognition and ethical perception.

Following this, in the second section of the task, managers were asked a series of open questions regarding the scenarios as well as about their thoughts and feelings during the decision-making process. To maintain consistency among participants, the same questions were asked of all respondents but room for space and flexibility in a semi-structured construct was afforded—an approach consistent with the Moral Judgement Interview procedure (Elm and Weber, 1994). These interviews were then coded for keywords to inform analysis using grounded theory to produce a series of qualitative findings.

Of the six music managers who participated the mean age was 32 years old, ranging from 25 to 48 years old. Four identified as male, one as female, and one as non-binary. The average years of experience were 8.9 years, where the mean education level was a postgraduate degree. Half of the respondents suggested their main genre was rock music. Figure 1 above outlines the profile of the participants.

Figure 1

Each of the three moral intensity scenarios is explored in the following sections in turn and the analysis for each scenario is split into two components. The first quantitatively assesses the manager’s scores in the moral intensity test. The findings suggest that music managers display ethical intention and therefore acknowledge and are aware of the ethical nature of their decision-making and seek to make ethical decisions. The second component is a qualitative examination of the findings from the interview section of the task. The findings suggest that music managers use two key devices—open and honest face-to-face conversations and an awareness of relationships—which act as the prisms through which they negotiate a series of moral and ethical tensions specific to the scenario in question.

4.1

Scenario 1

In the first scenario, a moral environment was devised whereby the ethical decision concerned the care of the musician. In this case, the music manager needed to weigh the consequences of accepting (or not) an offer from an agent about an important opportunity to continue a tour for a few more weeks, with the possibility that the extension might affect the mental and/or physical health of his or her artist. This scenario was, at least in part, informed by debates regarding a music manager’s ‘duty of care’ implicit in media discussions following the death of Avicii.

4.1.1

Questionnaire and moral intensity

The results of the questionnaire to explore ethical perception, ethical intention and the six components of moral intensity for the first scenario are given in Figure 2. For ‘Ethical Perception’, a higher mean indicates that the scenario is perceived to present a greater ethical problem. In this case, the ‘Ethical Perception’ mean (M = 6.17) was higher than the neutral value of 4, indicating that music managers do recognise and acknowledge an ethical problem in this scenario. For ‘Ethical Intention’, a lower mean indicates a greater intention from the music managers to behave in a different (i.e., more ethical) manner than the actor in the scenario. The implication of these findings is that music managers are aware of the moral and ethical dimensions of their choices and take these decisions seriously. For the ‘Moral Intensity’ components taken from Jones (1991), higher mean scores (M) indicate a higher level of moral intensity, and hence a greater identification by managers of an ethical issue.

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

The questions surrounding moral intensity help us to better understand the specific factors which inform music manager’s decision-making. In this scenario, ‘Proximity’ (M = 3.33) and ‘Social Consensus’ (M = 5.17) were perceived to be of a greater magnitude of importance than the other four measures of moral intensity. This suggests that the music managers in this study felt that their friendship with the artist was a crucial consideration in informing their decision-making and that most important of all was the social consensus surrounding their decision-making i.e., what might be considered acceptable, normal or usual within their genre, culture or profession. Understood within the context of Rest’s (1986), four-stage model of moral decision-making, this suggests that the music managers in this study (1) recognised the existence of a moral issue and (2) use Jones’ (1991) concepts of proximity and social consensus when making a moral judgement. The next question is, how do they (3) understand ideas of ‘moral intent’ i.e., deciding what to do and finally (4) implement this behaviour?

4.1.2

Interviews and negotiating decision-making

Five out of six of the managers interviewed made reference to the central role that ‘a conversation’ would play. Keywords coded here included conversation, encourage, explanation, opportunity and discussion. That is, when faced with what they perceive as a moral issue, the moral agent, in this case, would negotiate their decision-making interpersonally. Central to this process for interviewees was the understanding of the relationships involved. Here keywords coded included friendship, relationships, bargain and trust. Four of the six interviewees suggested that the quality of the relationship either with the agent or with the artist could affect the manager’s decision-making process, reflecting the findings on ‘Proximity’ from the questionnaire component of the task. If the relationship with the agent was felt to be close, for example, managers said that the offer might be negotiated by postponing the start date of the booking, and in this way give the artist the break he or she needed due to the intensity of the tour. If this were not possible, interviewees emphasised the importance of maintaining a strong relationship with the agent given that they considered an opportunity like this might come up again in the near future, especially if the artist is getting increasing attention in the popular media and wider music industries. In terms of the relationship with the musician, managers suggested that it would make the decision ‘easier’ in some respects if there was a friendship between them.

These two devices—open and honest conversations and an understanding of relationships—were the methods by which managers suggested that they would negotiate a series of key ethical and moral tensions. The first of these concerned the impact of their decision on what they referred to as ‘quality’. Here, managers expressed their concern about the quality of the artist’s performance if the tour were to continue without interruption. Even though interviewees understood that this was an important opportunity financially on the one hand, they expressed an awareness that if the artist needed a break but continued with the tour anyway there was a possibility that the quality of the performance might be impaired, on the other hand. This might lead both to possible damage to the artist’s image and to the fan experience. This impact on quality was balanced against what the interviewees felt could be the impact on money. Here, the potential profit earned from the booking was weighed against the potential for a loss of earnings in the future if the artist struggled and was unable to perform live. Finally, two of the six interviewees suggested that they would use conversations and relationships to evaluate the tension between the career development of the musician weighed against the potential impact of the decision on the musician’s mental health. This was framed by one manager in the context of ‘sacrifice’ and was not necessarily the most important concern among interviewees, but some respondents were certainly aware of it.

This small-scale study represents an attempt to assess how music managers engage in ethical decision-making across three hypothetical scenarios. Three general conclusions stand out which will inform the discussion below.

The findings of this article have suggested that the music managers in this study are ethically and morally aware—they are ‘moral agents’ in Rest’s (1986) terminology—but that their moral intent is negotiated in a noninstitutionalised framework free from an acknowledgement of formal guidelines. Within this, the key decision-making nexus takes place in the form of a conversation between parties whose status as either a ‘friend’ or a ‘professional colleague’ is extremely blurred. At the same time however, the music managers in this study were keenly aware of the social norms and context within which their decision-making took place as seen in their mean scores for Jones’ (1991) concept of ‘Social Consensus’. This suggests that perhaps what is required is not regulatory change (which would be difficult to articulate, problematic to enforce, and the findings here suggest likely to lack influence), but cultural change to help guide and inform the ethical decision-making of managers. This, of course, is a much slower process and one which, in many ways, feels frustrating when faced with unimaginable tragedy such as the loss of Avicii.

This study acts as only an introductory sketch to allow us to think more critically about the musician–manager relationship from an ethical or moral perspective. However, the relative standardisation of the research methodology might provide a helpful basis for other researchers interested in this topic and could allow the research design to be employed in other contexts and with larger or different samples. As was illustrated following the suicide of Avicii, understanding the complex dynamic between musicians and their managers is a vital task, and one where the answers are rarely simple, the evidence rarely clear and the outcomes rarely subtle. It is hoped that this article might be a preliminary step in opening up this conversation.